Complete weird tales of.., p.856
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 856
“Well, gentlemen,” he said in English, “are you amusing yourselves in the Café Biribi?”
“Sufficiently,” nodded Warner.
Wildresse peeped stealthily over his shoulder, as though expecting to surprise a listener. Then his very small black eyes stole toward Halkett, and he furtively examined him.
“Jour de fête,” he remarked in his harshly resonant voice. “Grand doings in town tonight. Do you gentlemen dine here this evening?”
“I think not,” said Warner.
“I am sorry. It will be gay. There are dance partners to be had for a polite bow. You should see my little caissière yonder!” He made a grunting sound and kissed his blunt fingers to the ceiling. “M-m-m!” he growled. “She can dance! But I don’t permit her to dance very often. Only a special client now and then — —”
“May we consider ourselves special clients?” inquired Warner, amused.
“Oh, I don’t say yes and I don’t say no.” He jerked his round, shaven head. “It all depends on her. She dances with whom she pleases. And if the Emperor of China asked her, nevertheless she should be free to please herself.”
“She’s very pretty,” said Halkett.
“Others have said so before you in the Cabaret de Biribi.”
“Why do you call your cabaret the Café Biribi?” asked Warner.
“Eh? By God, I call it Biribi because I’m not ashamed of the name.”
Halkett looked up into his wicked black eyes, and Wildresse wagged his finger at him.
“Supposition,” he said, “that your son is a good boy — a little lively, but a good boy — and he comes of age and he goes with his class for two years — three years now, and to hell with it!
“Bon! Supposition, also, that his sergeant is a tyrant, his captain an ass, his colonel an imbecile! Bon! Given a little natural ardor — a trifle of animal spirits, and the lad is up before the council — bang! — and he gets his in the battalions of Biribi!”
His voice had become a sort of ominous growl.
“As for me,” he said heavily, “I mock at their council and their blockhead colonel! I accept their challenge; I do not conceal that my son is serving in a disciplinary battalion; I salute all the battalions of Biribi — where there are better men in the ranks than there are in many a regiment of the line, by God! And I honor those battalions by naming my cabaret ‘Biribi.’ The Government gets no change out of me!”
The man asserted too much, swaggered too obviously; and Halkett, not suspicious but always cautious, kept his inquiring eyes fixed on him.
Warner said with a smile:
“You have the courage of your convictions, Monsieur Wildresse.”
“As for that,” growled Wildresse, casting another stealthy glance behind him, “I’ve got courage. Courage? Who hasn’t? Everybody’s got courage. It’s brains the world lacks. Excuse me, gentlemen — affairs of business — and if you want to dance with my little cashier, there is no harm in asking her.” And he shuffled away, his heavy head bent sideways, his hands tightly clasped behind him.
“There’s an evil type,” remarked Halkett. “What a brute it is!”
Warner said:
“With his cropped head and his smooth, pasty face, and those unpleasant black eyes of his, he looks like an ex-convict. It doesn’t astonish me that he has a son serving in the disciplinary battalions of Africa.”
“Does it astonish you that he is the employer of that girl behind the counter?” asked Halkett.
Warner turned to look at her again:
“It’s interesting, isn’t it? She seems to be another breed.”
“Yes. Now, what do you make of her?”
Warner hesitated, then looked up with a laugh.
“Halkett,” he said, “I’m going over to ask her to dance.”
“All right; I’ll hold the table,” said the Englishman, amused. And Warner rose, skirted the dancers, and walked around to the cashier’s desk, aware all the while that the girl’s indifferent grey eyes were following his movements.
CHAPTER III
WARNER TUCKED HIS walking stick and straw hat under one arm and, sauntering over to the cashier’s desk, made a very nice and thoroughly Continental bow to the girl behind it.
Her impartial and uninterested gaze rested on him; after a moment she inclined her head, leisurely and in silence.
He said in French:
“Would Mademoiselle do me the honor of dancing this dance with me?”
She replied in a sweet but indifferent voice:
“Monsieur is too amiable. But he sees that I am caissière of the establishment.”
“Yet even the fixed stars of heaven dance sometimes to the music of the spheres.”
She smiled slightly:
“When one is merely a fixture de cabaret, one dances only to the music of the Sbires! You must ask Monsieur Wildresse if I may dance with you.”
“He suggested that I ask you.”
“Very well, if it’s a matter of business — —”
Warner laughed.
“Don’t you ever dance for pleasure?” he asked in English.
She replied in English:
“Is it your theory that it would give me pleasure to dance with you?”
“It is,” he said, still laughing. “But by demonstration alone are theories proven.”
The girl hesitated, her grey eyes resting on him. Then she turned her head, drew a pencil from her chestnut hair, rapped with it on the counter. A head waiter came speeding to her.
“Aristide, I’m going to dance,” she said in the same sweetly indifferent voice. “Have the goodness to sit in my chair until I return or Mélanie arrives.”
She slid to the floor from her high seat, came out, through the wire gate, and began to unpin her cambric apron.
The closer view revealed to him her thinness in her black gown. She was not so tall as he had thought her, and she was younger; but he had been right about her cheeks and lips. Both were outrageously painted.
She handed her daintily embroidered apron to the waiter, laid one hand lightly on Warner’s arm; he led her to the edge of the dancing floor, clasped her waist and swung her with him out into the noisy whirl beyond.
Thin, almost immature in her angular slenderness, the girl in motion became enchantingly graceful. Supple as a sapling in the summer wind, her hand rested feather-light in his; her long, narrow feet seemed like shadows close above the floor, never touching it.
The orchestra ceased playing after a few minutes, but old man Wildresse, who had been watching them, growled, “Go on!” and the music recommenced amid plaudits and shouts of general approval.
Once, as they passed the students’ table, Warner heard the voice of old Wildresse in menacing dispute with the student who had first shouted out an invitation to Philippa.
“She dances with whom she chooses!” roared Wildresse. “Do you understand, Monsieur? By God, if the Grand Turk himself asked her she should not dance with him unless she wished to!”
Warner said to her jestingly:
“Did the Grand Turk ever ask you, Philippa?”
The girl did not smile.
“Perhaps I am dancing with him now. One never knows — in a cabaret.”
When the music ceased she was breathing only a trifle faster, and her cheeks under the paint glowed softly pink.
“Could you join us?” he asked. “Is it permitted?”
“I’d like to.... Yes.”
So he took her back to the table, where Halkett rose and paid his respects gracefully; and they seated themselves and ordered a grenadine for her.
Old Wildresse, sidling by, paused with a non-committal grunt:
“Eh bien? On s’amuse? Dis, petit galopin!”
“I’m thirsty,” said the girl Philippa.
“And your caisse?”
“Tell them to find Mélanie,” she retorted indifferently.
“Bon! A jour de fête, too! How long are you going to be?” But as she glanced up he winked at her.
She shrugged her shoulders, leaned forward, chose a straw, and plunged it into the crimson depths of her iced grenadine.
Old Wildresse looked at her a moment, then he also shrugged his shoulders and went shuffling away, always apparently distrustful of that invisible something just behind his back.
Halkett said:
“Mr. Warner and I have been discussing an imaginary portrait of you.”
“What?” The clear, grey eyes turned questioningly to him, to Warner.
The latter nodded:
“I happen to be a painter. Mr. Halkett and I have agreed that it would be an interesting experiment to paint your portrait — as you really are.”
The girl seemed slightly puzzled.
“As I really am?” she repeated. “But, Messieurs, am I not what you see before you?”
The music began again; the Louvain student, a little tipsy but very decorous, arose, bowed to the girl Philippa, bowed to Halkett and to Warner, and asked for the honor of a dance with her.
“Merci, Monsieur — another time, perhaps,” she replied indifferently.
The boy seemed disposed to linger, but he was not quarrelsome, and finally Halkett got up and led him away.
From moment to moment Warner, glancing across during his tête-à-tête with the girl Philippa, could see the Louvain student continually shaking hands with Halkett who seemed horribly bored.
A little later still the entire Louvain delegation insisted on entertaining Halkett with beer and song; and the resigned but polite Englishman, now seated at their table, was being taught to sing “La Brabançonne,” between draughts of Belgian beer.
The girl Philippa played with the stem of her glass and stirred the ice in it with her broken wheat straw. The healthy color in her face had now faded to an indoor pallor again under the rouge.
“So you are a painter,” she said, her grey eyes fixed absently on her glass. “Are you a distinguished painter, Monsieur?”
He laughed:
“You’ll have to ask others that question, Philippa.”
“Why? Don’t you know whether you are distinguished?”
“I’ve had some success,” he admitted, amused.
She thought a moment, then leaned forward toward the Louvain table.
“Mr. Halkett,” she called in English. “Is Mr. Warner a distinguished American painter?”
Halkett laughed.
“One of the most celebrated American painters of the day!”
The Louvain students, understanding, rose as a man, waved their glasses, and cheered for Warner, the “grand peintre Américain.” Which embarrassed and annoyed him so that his face grew brighter than the paint on Philippa’s lips.
“I’m sorry,” she said, noticing his annoyance. “I did not mean to make you conspicuous.”
Everybody in the café was now looking at him; on every side he gazed into amused and smiling faces, saw glasses lifted, heard the cries of easily aroused Gallic enthusiasm.
“Vive le grand peintre Américain! Vive l’Amérique du Nord!”
“This is tiresome!” exclaimed Philippa. “Let us walk down to the river and sit in one of our boats. I should really like to talk to you sensibly — unless you are too much annoyed with me.”
She beckoned a waiter to bring her apron; and she put it on.
“When you are ready, Monsieur,” she said serenely.
So they rose; Warner paid the bill, and, with a whimsical smile at Halkett, walked out beside Philippa through one of the rear doors, and immediately found himself in brightest sunshine, amid green trees and flower beds.
Here, under the pitiless sky, the girl’s face became ghastly under its rouged mask — the more shocking, perhaps, because her natural skin, if pale, appeared to be smooth and clear; and the tragic youth of her seemed to appeal to all out of doors from the senseless abuse it was enduring.
To see her there in the freshness of the open breeze, sunshine and shadow dappling the green under foot, the blue overhead untroubled by a cloud, gave Warner a slightly sick sensation.
“The air is pleasant,” she remarked, unconscious of the effect she had on him.
He nodded. They walked down the grassy slope to the river bank, where rows of boats lay moored. A few were already in use out on the calm stream; young men in their shirt sleeves splashed valiantly at the oars; young women looked on under sunshades of flamboyant tints.
There was a white punt there called the Lys. Philippa stepped into it, drew a key from her apron pocket, unlocked the padlock. Then, lifting the pole from the grass, she turned and invited Warner with a gesture.
He had not bargained for this; but he tossed the chain aboard, stepped in, and offered to take the pole.
But Philippa evidently desired to do the punting herself; so he sat back, watching her sometimes and sometimes looking at the foliage, where they glided swiftly along under overhanging branches and through still, glimmering reaches of green water, set with scented rushes where dragon flies glittered and midges danced in clouds, and the slim green frogs floated like water sprites, partly submerged, looking at them out of golden goblin eyes that never blinked.
“The town is en fête,” remarked Philippa presently. “Why should I not be too?”
Warner laughed:
“Do you call this a fête?”
“For me, yes.” ... After a moment, turning from her pole: “Do you not find it agreeable?”
“Certainly. What little river is this?”
“The Récollette.”
“It flows by Saïs, too. I did not recognize it for the same. The Récollette is swifter and shallower below Saïs.”
“You know Saïs, then?”
“I live there in summer.”
“Oh. And in winter?”
“Paris.”
An unconscious sigh of relief escaped her, that it was not necessary to play the spy with this man. It was the other man who interested Wildresse.
The girl poled on in silence for a while, then deftly guided the Lys into the cool green shadow of a huge oak which overhung the water, the lower branches touching it.
“The sun is warm,” she observed, driving in the pole and tying the white punt so that it could swing with the current.
She came and seated herself by Warner, smiled frankly.
“Do you know,” she said, “I’ve never before done this for pleasure.”
“What haven’t you done for pleasure?” he inquired, perplexed.
“This — what I am doing.”
“You mean you never before went out punting with a customer?”
“Not for the pleasure of it — only for business reasons.”
He hesitated to understand, refused to, because, for all her careless freedom and her paint, he could not believe her to be merely a fille de cabaret.
“Business reasons,” he repeated. “What is your business?”
“Cashier, of course.”
“Well, does your business ever take you boating with customers? Is it part of your business to dance with a customer and drink grenadine with him?”
“Yes, but you wouldn’t understand — —” And suddenly she comprehended his misunderstanding of her and blushed deeply.
“I am not a cocotte. Did you think I meant that?”
“I know you are not. I didn’t know what you meant.”
There was a silence; the color in her cheeks cooled under the rouge.
“It happened this way,” she said quietly. “I didn’t want to make it a matter of business with you. Even in the beginning I didn’t.... You please me.... After all, the town is en fête.... After all, a girl has a right to please herself once in her life.... And business is a very lonely thing for the young.... Why shouldn’t I amuse myself for an hour with a client who pleases me?”
“Are you doing it?”
“Yes. I never before knew a distinguished painter — only noisy boys from the schools, whose hair is uncut, whose conversation is blague, and whose trousers are too baggy to suit me. They smoke soldier’s tobacco, and their subjects of discussion are not always convenable.”
He said, curiously:
“As for that, you must hear much that is not convenable in the cabaret.”
“Oh, yes. I don’t notice it when it is not addressed to me.... Please tell me what you paint — if I am permitted to ask.”
“Soldiers.”
“Only soldiers?”
“Portraits, sometimes, and landscapes out of doors — anything that appeals to me. Do pictures interest you?”
“I used to go to the Louvre and the Luxembourg when I was a child. It was interesting. Did you say that you would like to make a portrait of me?”
“I said that if I ever did make a portrait of you I’d paint you as you really are.”
Her perplexed gaze had the disconcerting directness of a child’s.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Shall I explain?”
“If you would be so kind.”
“You won’t be offended?”
She regarded him silently; her brows became slightly contracted.
“Such a man as you would not willingly offend, I think.”
“No, of course not. I didn’t mean that sort of thing. But you might not like what I have to say.”
“If I merit what you say about me, it doesn’t matter whether I like it or not, does it? Tell me.”
He laughed:
“Well, then, if I were going to paint you, I’d first ask you to wash your cheeks.”
She sat silent, humiliated, the painful color deepening and waning under the rouge.
“And,” he continued pleasantly, “after your face had been well scrubbed, I’d paint you in your black gown, cuffs and apron of a caissière, just as I first saw you there behind the desk, one foot swinging, and your cheek resting on your hand.
“But behind your eyes, which looked out so tranquilly across the tumult of the cabaret, I’d paint a soul as clean as a flame.... I’m wondering whether I’d make any mistake in painting you that way, Philippa?”
The girl Philippa had fixed her grey eyes on him with fascinated but troubled intensity. They remained so for a while after he had finished speaking.
